This invention relates generally to personnel screening systems utilized at passenger terminals, and more particularly, to an integrated passenger screening system.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has recently mandated more stringent inspection procedures be implemented by the travel industry to reduce the possibility of passengers boarding a carrier such as a plane, for example, carrying concealed weapons, explosives, or other contraband. To facilitate preventing passengers boarding a plane carrying concealed weapons, explosives, etc., the TSA requires that all passengers be screened prior to boarding the aircraft.
For example, passengers arriving at the airport terminal first submit to a manual verification process that generally includes presenting their boarding pass and a form of identification such as a driver's license or passport, for example, to security personnel. The security personnel then manually verify that the passenger has a valid boarding pass, the name on the identification corresponds to the name on the boarding pass, and that the picture on the license or passport corresponds to the passenger presenting the license and boarding pass to the security personnel.
After the manual verification process is completed, the passenger is requested to walk through a metal detector to ensure that the passenger is not carrying any concealed weapons. While the metal detector is reasonably effective at detecting specific quantities of metal, the metal detector can not distinguish between a possible weapon or other non-threatening items such as shoes that may include metallic portions. More specifically, known metal detectors may intrepret metallic shanks fabricated into many common shoes as metallic weapons hidden in the shoes or on the ankle/calf region beneath clothing. As a result, metallic portions of known shoes may walk through metal detectors.
Because of the potential for a high false alarm rate, security personnel frequently request that passengers remove their shoes and place their shoes into the baggage screening system such that security personnel can visually verify the metallic object prior to the passenger boarding the plane and to also ascertain whether the shoes may conceal any explosive material or devices. As a result, the known metal detection system is time-consuming for the passengers, and does not distinguish between metallic portions fabricated into many common shoes and metallic weapons hidden in the shoes or near the ankle/calf region of the passenger.